General
Digital currency battle shows Facebook lobbying falling flat
Zachary Warmbrodt, Politico
Facebook is botching its dream of becoming a new powerhouse in finance, failing to win over lawmakers and regulators who say they are far from ready to allow the social media giant’s ambitious cryptocurrency plans to move forward. With back-to-back Senate and House hearings set to kick off Tuesday morning, key lawmakers and aides from both parties said in interviews that they had not yet had the chance to meet with Facebook or had gotten incomplete, at times conflicting, information from briefings involving the company.
Peter Thiel Says Elizabeth Warren Is Most ‘Dangerous’ Candidate
Lizette Chapman, Bloomberg
Peter Thiel, the technology industry’s most prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, called Elizabeth Warren the most “dangerous” Democratic presidential candidate.
Silicon Valley’s Right Wing Is Angry And Punching Back
Alex Kantrowitz, BuzzFeed News
On Jan. 16, Republican lawmakers turned on one of the world’s biggest tech companies. A month earlier, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the House Judiciary Committee that his company hadn’t been manually altering search results.
Uber and Lyft drivers were paid up to $100 to protest a bill that could make them employees
Johana Bhuiyan, Los Angeles Times
Fighting to stave off a bill that could force them to treat their workers as employees, Uber and Lyft last week deployed an unusual weapon: a promise of extra pay to drivers willing to lobby on their behalf. The ride-hailing companies recruited drivers to rally outside the state Capitol on Tuesday in advance of a Senate labor hearing on the bill, Assembly Bill 5.
Uber will tie executive compensation to meeting diversity goals
Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN
Uber’s workforce may still be mostly white men, but the company says it is taking new measures to diversify its staff, especially managerial roles. The newly public ride-hailing company released on Monday its latest diversity report, which included a breakdown of its US workforce by race or ethnicity and gender.
Tesla employees say they took shortcuts, worked through harsh conditions to meet Model 3 production goals
Lora Kolodny, CNBC
Current and former Tesla employees working in the company’s open-air “tent” factory say they were pressured to take shortcuts to hit aggressive Model 3 production goals, including making fast fixes to parts with electrical tape, working through harsh conditions and skipping previously required vehicle tests.
Stocks Fluctuate as Big Banks Report; Dollar Gains: Markets Wrap
Yakob Peterseil, Bloomberg
U.S. futures drifted with European stocks following a mixed session in Asia as investors looked to earnings and policy makers for the rally’s next catalyst. European bonds climbed and the dollar strengthened.
Intellectual Property and Antitrust
YouTube’s Trampled Foes Plot Antitrust Revenge
Lucas Shaw and Mark Bergen, Bloomberg
Brian O’Kelley built AppNexus Inc. to help companies advertise anywhere on the internet. Its software plugged into virtually every digital ad-trading hub, including those from Google, the biggest ad seller, and Google’s YouTube video service. By 2014, AppNexus was valued at $1.2 billion.
Broadcom’s Bid for Symantec Is Said to Have Stalled
Michael J. de la Merced, The New York Times
Broadcom’s effort to buy Symantec was suspended in recent days, people briefed on the matter said on Monday, after the two companies disagreed on a takeover price late in the negotiations. The decision puts on ice — at least for now — efforts to create one of the biggest, and most unusual, marriages in technology this year.
Telecom, Wireless and TV
Canada set to postpone Huawei 5G decision to after vote, given sour ties with China
David Ljunggren, Reuters
Canada is likely to postpone a decision on whether to allow China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to supply 5G network equipment until after the October federal election, given increasingly strained relations with Beijing, say three well-placed sources. The sources, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation, said the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was reluctant to move until the fate of two Canadians detained in China became clearer.
Ajit Pai’s new gift to cable companies would kill local fees and rules
Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica
Ajit Pai is continuing his multi-year battle against local broadband regulation with a plan that would stop cities and towns from using their authority over cable TV networks to regulate Internet access. Chairman Pai’s proposal, scheduled for a vote at the Federal Communications Commission’s August 1 meeting, would also limit the fees that municipalities can charge cable companies.
Republican House member introduces bill to boost U.S. 5G presence
Bryan Pietsch, Reuters
A Republican lawmaker on Monday introduced legislation to boost the presence of U.S. firms in global industry standards bodies to combat China’s rising influence in next-generation 5G cellular network technology. The bill, from U.S. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, presses the secretary of state to boost the “representation and leadership” of the United States at international telecommunication organizations that create standards for the 5G cellular network.
The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t
William J. Broad, The New York Times
In 2000, the Broward County Public Schools in Florida received an alarming report. Like many affluent school districts at the time, Broward was considering laptops and wireless networks for its classrooms and 250,000 students.
Mobile Technology and Social Media
Apple preaches privacy. Lawmakers want the talk to turn to action.
Reed Albergotti and Tony Romm, The Washington Post
When Apple CEO Tim Cook privately hosted six Democratic lawmakers at the company’s space-age headquarters this spring, he opened the conversation with a plea — for Congress to finally draft privacy legislation after years of federal inaction.
House Intelligence chief presses social media companies on deepfake policies
Elizabeth Culliford, Reuters
U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Monday pressed major social media companies on how they plan to handle the threat of deepfake images and videos on their platforms ahead of the 2020 elections. The Democratic congressman wrote letters to the chief executives of Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google, which owns YouTube, asking about the companies’ formal policies on deepfakes and their research into technologies to detect the doctored content.
Google Protest Leader Meredith Whittaker Is Leaving the Company
Mark Bergen and Joshua Brustein, Bloomberg
Meredith Whittaker, who helped lead employee protests at Google over the search giant’s military work, artificial intelligence and policies, is leaving the company. A Google spokeswoman confirmed Whittaker’s departure after another Google worker tweeted about the move on Monday.
Anti-Defamation League Head Blasts Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Over Online Extremism
Jeff John Roberts, Fortune
The head of a leading anti-hate group says Facebook’s CEO failed a critical test in removing toxic speech from its service. Mark Zuckerberg’s recent justification for not removing a doctored video depicting the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi amounted to an ethical failure, said Jonathan Greenblat, who leads the Anti-Defamation League.
A Low-Level Influencer Allegedly Killed An “E-Girl” And Posted Photos Of Her Body To Instagram
Ryan Broderick, BuzzFeed News
A low-level Instagram influencer killed a popular e-girl and posted photos of her body on social media sites, police said. Brandan Andrew Clark, 21, allegedly killed fellow influencer Bianca Devins, a 17-year-old from Utica, New York, in his car and, according to police, posted photos of the body to Instagram, 4chan, and Discord.
Cybersecurity and Privacy
Security reports reveal how Assange turned an embassy into a command post for election meddling
Marshall Cohen et al., CNN
New documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange received in-person deliveries, potentially of hacked materials related to the 2016 US election, during a series of suspicious meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The documents build on the possibility, raised by special counsel Robert Mueller in his report on Russian meddling, that couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy.
House passes bills to boost small business cybersecurity
Maggie Miller, The Hill
The House passed legislation by voice vote on Monday intended to increase cybersecurity at the Small Business Administration (SBA) and separately approved a bill to help small businesses defend against cyber attacks.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Why Congress Gets Privacy Wrong
Matthew Daniels, Morning Consult
It’s a truism that if something on the internet is free, the product is you. When it comes to the American public having their privacy rights trampled by the business models of Big Data companies, members of Congress get this part of the problem right.
Intel Executive: Rein In Data Brokers
David A. Hoffman, The New York Times
Did you know that your personal information is available online to anyone with $10? This isn’t some illegal, dark-web transaction.
To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public
Robert Epstein, Bloomberg Businessweek
Recognition is growing worldwide that something big needs to be done about Big Tech, and fast. More than $8 billion in fines have been levied against Google by the European Union since 2017. Facebook Inc., facing an onslaught of investigations, has dropped in reputation to almost rock bottom among the 100 most visible companies in the U.S. Former employees of Google and Facebook have warned that these companies are “ripping apart the social fabric” and can “hijack the mind.”
Research Reports
The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow
Susan Lund et al., McKinsey & Company
The US labor market looks markedly different today than it did two decades ago. It has been reshaped by dramatic events like the Great Recession but also by a quieter ongoing evolution in the mix and location of jobs.
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